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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26773612">Kisses</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/smashurbanipal/pseuds/smashurbanipal'>smashurbanipal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Missing Scene, Movie: Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, One Shot, Relationship(s), Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:09:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>924</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26773612</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/smashurbanipal/pseuds/smashurbanipal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Picnicking at Varykino, Padmé and Anakin swap stories of their first kisses.</p><p>Short little prelude to the canon conversation, featuring hot mess Anakin who can't flirt his way out of a paper bag.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Kisses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>FFnet repost for minor edits and because I've got a longer followup I'm publishing here concurrently, called 'Promises'.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Tell me yours first.” Padmé leans in with a coy smile, gratified to see that she’s managed to embarrass Anakin for once instead of the other way around. “I won’t tell Obi-Wan,” she coaxes, tilting her head to try to meet his wandering eyes.</p><p>“I already told him,” Anakin retorts. “Right after it happened. I’m a better Jedi than you think I am, you know.” He has that defensive note in his tone again, but Padmé’s set her mind to prying open the durasteel doors around his heart.</p><p>“Then you won’t mind telling me, too.”</p><p>He shifts, continuing to avoid looking at her, and suddenly she worries that she’s struck a nerve, that something really terrible had happened to him. He was a slave, perhaps he’d been forced—</p><p>“I don’t remember how old I was. Fourteen, maybe. Or fifteen,” he says, even as Padmé parts her lips to excuse him from sharing. She lets out her indrawn breath as a little sigh of relief. “She was a Padawan a couple years younger than me. I didn’t want to; she just ran up and did it. Her friends dared her to. They were all scared of me.”</p><p>He doesn’t say why, but Padmé knows. She’s half afraid of him herself, in the most spine-tingling way. She remembers the smouldering focus in his eyes as he knelt above her, blue-white light flashing inches from her face, the air buzzing with plasma and the sizzle of kouhoun flesh. And she remembers long ago when the HoloNet was raving over the story of how young Skywalker, his first real lightsaber barely warm in his hand, had killed an infamous pirate and slaver. Surprised, Padmé had counted on one hand the years since she’d last seen her little Ani, and her mind incredulously echoed, <em> Killed? </em></p><p>But if she lets herself, she can recall that even as a sweet little boy there was an intensity to him, perhaps born of hard living, a recklessness that’s matured almost into ruthlessness. She can hear it now: <em> Dare you to kiss the Chosen One. Bet you’ll end up impaled, like Krayn. </em></p><p>“Children that age can be so cruel,” she says, as much to justify as comfort him. “Was she cute, at least?”</p><p>“Wh—? No! I don’t know!” Anakin’s laughing again, and not for the first time, Padmé finds herself marvelling at how a young man carrying so many burdens can laugh so freely. He’s a walking paradox, lurking darkness coexisting with pure light. She’s seen the proud ice in his eyes, but right now he’s making her feel warm enough to thaw Ilum. </p><p>“She was gone as soon as it happened, and I heard them all laughing down the hall.” His smile dwindles. “I just remember it was… forceful. Chapped. She smelled funny, too.”</p><p>He looks back to Padmé, and she can read in his eyes what he doesn’t say: <em> Unlike you. </em>It’s possibly the strangest compliment she’s never been given, in a day of strange compliments, as Anakin circuitously tries to tell her what he’s been forbidden to feel. To Padmé, that earnest awkwardness comes as a refreshing change of pace from the honeyed words and ulterior motives of politicians. But she refuses to lose her composure. The last time she was caught off guard by an odd remark of Anakin’s, she forgot to stop him from kissing her.</p><p>...And would that be so bad?</p><p>“That was the only other time,” he says, disrupting her thoughts.</p><p>“The only <em> other </em>...?”</p><p>He’s embarrassed, pulling his lip through his teeth. “Before you.”</p><p>Padmé conceals her shock with a smile. “I’m sure Obi-Wan was very busy keeping them away from you. With a face like that...”</p><p>She trails off. He’s blinking at her, confused, his eyebrows dipping into that little consternated furrow just like when he was a child. She remembers how young he still is, how innocent, in spite of the body count. He doesn’t realise. She’s the first girl he’s willingly kissed, and he has no idea how beautiful he is.</p><p>She watches it sink in, his expression shifting from incomprehension to incredulity. “My face?” he repeats. “You think I’m…?”</p><p>“I’m sure most people do,” Padmé replies, subtly shifting the topic away from her own feelings. She’d thought he must be well aware. <em> Does that look work on the other girls? </em> she’d wanted to ask him several times. And there certainly could have been other girls. Jedi regulations notwithstanding, Anakin must have caught the attention of dozens of his peers. But he didn’t even notice, as he dreamt of her.</p><p><em> If he weren’t a Jedi, </em> she finds herself thinking, desperately, <em> if he weren’t a Jedi, if he weren’t a Jedi </em> —and Sola’s words come echoing back to her. <em> You’re the first boyfriend my sister’s brought home</em>. If he weren’t a Jedi, she’d let him be. She’d let him whisper his strange compliments into her hair, interlace his fingers with hers as he escorts her to the palace. She’d make him court her for months, and she knows he would, gladly, fanatically.</p><p><em> If he weren’t a Jedi </em>—and she aches to let him worship her, body and soul.</p><p>But he’s a Jedi. He can’t be hers when he already belongs to his Order. It’s just so easy to forget anything else exists when brooding blue eyes are fixed on her as if she were the entire universe, the Force itself, and she can feel love blazing from him with the ferocity of Tatooine’s suns.</p><p>“I was twelve,” she says, looking down. “His name was Palo…”</p>
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